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Marshon Brooks

On the court, the season started with “rebuilding” expectations. A strong non-conference record and some early strides in the development of the “team” gave us momentary hope that our process of rebuilding the program might happen more quickly than expected. While I am proud of the effort and improvements our players have made, my expectation that this season would be a developmental year with its associated ups and downs has remained constant. Our current record keeps me up at night, as I’m sure it does for all Friar fans, but we feel we have instilled the moral values in our student-athletes which will ultimately lead to success on the court.

Nerlens Noel, a senior center at Tilton (N.H.) who is the top ranked player in the ESPNU 100, said that he’d bypass contributing and dominate in the laid back setting.

“I mean, think about it, they don’t really play a whole lot of defense anyway in the All-Star Game,” Noel said. “They don’t contest dunks or anything. Oh yeah, I think I could get in there and drop a 30-piece on the low.”

Marshon getting a B. Even with the injury and missed time, that seems a little harsh based on his draft position and expectations.

Brooks has been compared to Kobe Bryant early in his career — and it’s easy to see why. The rookie plays with a confidence far beyond his 23 years, and ranks second to Kyrie Irving in scoring among first-year players (14.6 ppg). Brooks excels at creating his own shot in isolation sets, but struggled to guard and Johnson will be the first to tell you he needs to work on his defense. A broken toe kept Brooks sidelined for a bit, but he seems to have returned to form, and established a new career-high with 24 points in the Nets’ loss to the Magic on Wednesday night. Brooks looks like the steal of the 2011 draft so far.

While much of the focus this spring has been on improving the frontcourt, the Friars are in pursuit of Mislav Brzoja, a 6’5 Croatian shooting guard currently prepping at Traders Point Christian Academy in Indiana. He averaged over 18 points per game during the U18 European Championship and is said to be a great shooter. He certainly looks the part in the video below.

Man, and all I got when I went to the Dunk last weekend was a bunch of 10 dollar beers…

The first 2,500 fans to enter the Dunkin’ Donuts Center for the game will be given a cubic zirconium, one of which will be a diamond. Fans must bring it to Hannoush Jewelers to find out if they were the lucky winner of the diamond. The Dunk opens at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday.

Dunn and Ledo make the cut, but hard to take it seriously when it says Dunn will be the starting PG next year. Unless they know something we don’t about Vincent Council? Doubtful, since they only seem to know about slideshows.

Kris Dunn will be the starting point guard for the Friars next season. He and Ricardo Ledo will make up a whole new backcourt.

Dunn’s length and ball-handling skills allow him to play either guard position, so don’t be surprised to see him give the ball-handling duties to Ledo at times. However, he has great court vision and passing ability, which makes him a great point guard.

Dunn has a lot of potential that he hasn’t tapped into yet, but with some good coaching, he could become a true star.

Providence will likely lose big man Bilal Dixon and need to add an interior presence. They are involved with studs Nerlens Noel, Chris Obekpa and JaKarr Sampson and would be thrilled to land one of them to shore up the interior.

By 2013, Council will be gone but the rest of the team is pretty young. Providence is targeting many of the best young players in the Classes of 2013 and ’14, especially New England-area players like 6-9 Goodluck Okonoboh and 6-5 shooting guard Wayne Selden, both of whom play at The Tilton (N.H.) School along with Noel. They also like 2013 James Young, a 6-5 small forward out of Michigan.

Marshon Brooks scored a career high 24 points on 10-15 shooting, including 4-7 from downtown. This came on the eve of his anniversary of dropping 52 points against Notre Dame. Unfortunately, both of these games were losses.

The ninth and final Ed Cooley Radio Show until the BIG EAST Tournament will air Thursday, February 23, from Hannoush Jewelers located at 685 Bald Hill Road in Warwick, R.I. The show will air live from 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. on Sports Radio 103.7 WEEI-FM and will be streamed live on Friars.com. It is free and open to the public and is an excellent opportunity for fans to meet Friar Head Coach Ed Cooley. FREE food and beverage will be served!

Lost in the #Linsanity of the Nets win over the Knicks last night in which Deron Williams showed he was the best PG in town was Marshon Brooks’ best game back since returning from injury. He scored 18 points on 7-15 shooting, also picking up 3 rebounds and 4 assists. In the latest Grantland Rookie Rankings, Brooks dropped down to number 6, but more performances like he had in the Garden will get him back up in no time.

If it wasn’t for Moe Harkless going nuts against Duke (see, it wasn’t just us who couldn’t stop him!), Buckets would have easily won his third Rookie of the Week. We’ll take his first Honor Roll appearance.

LaDontae Henton, Providence, F, Fr.
Averaged 22.5 points and 9.0 rebounds in two games. Set Providence’s freshman scoring record with 33 points in an 81-76 loss at USF.

Orlando Sanchez, a 6-foot-9, 205-pound face-up four man from Monroe (N.Y.) College, remains wide open in his recruitment.

“I don’t know what school I want to go,” Sanchez, a native of the Dominican Republic who played last summer for Kentucky coach John Calipari on the Dominican team, told SNY.tv Sunday. “I need to talk to my coaches.”

With the Friars struggling, it’s been refreshing seeing Marshon do great things as an NBA Rookie (even if the Nets were losing at the same alarming rate as PC). Now this has to happen. Poor Marshon.

The Nets have announced via Twitter that MarShon Brooks has “a broken little toe on his right foot. No timetable for his return”. Brooks will see a foot specialist later Monday.

Brooks tweeted “sigh” shortly the news was announced. He arrived at practice Monday morning with swelling in his toe. He was given an x-ray which revealed the fracture. Avery Johnson said there’s no indication when Brooks broke his toe, that in fact it could have been several games back.

At this point, I kind of want him to stop doing any physical activity until he gets to campus.

The most notable difference between Dunn now and six months ago though is his physical frame. He’s added what appears to be over 10 pounds of sheer muscle as his upper body is really starting to jump out in his chest and shoulders.

For as good as Dunn is, one of the most exciting parts about his game is that he’s really only starting to scratch the surface of his potential. Once he learns some of the intricacies of how to play pick and roll, further polishes his quarter court skill set, and continues to develop into more of a mismatch problem in the backcourt his value and overall impact will shoot through the roof.

On February 2-5, Cox Sports will present the National Prep School Invitational, a basketball showcase featuring 30 of the top prep schools in the country. Games will be available to watch free at coxsportsonline.com, including South Kent’s game on February 2, featuring Providence College recruit Ricardo Ledo.

This is Cox Sports’ first year presenting the event. Fans who cannot watch the games live online can catch replays on Cox Sports (Cox channel 3, 1003 in HD). A full schedule of replays can be found at coxsportsonline.com. Announcing duties for game coverage will be handled by Scott Cordischi, Adam Finkelstein, Mike Mancuso, and Christina Sheehan.

Surely Ed Cooley is busy trying to sell Providence, and not focusing on the health of Lavin (considering they are going after the exact same players).

“There’s an example, kind of proof in the pudding, whether I had cancer or not, it’s still such an attractive situation. We’re still able to sign top prospects and move our program forward.”Naturally in recruiting he’s going to hear from all the other schools, speculation, innuendo and rumors, so my inclination is to take that head on and just lay it out. We were able to convince Jamal that this was a great situation in spite of the fact that I’m currently recuperating from prostate cancer.

Lavin, 47, plans to sign five or six players from the Class of 2012 and has targeted decommits JaKarr Sampson and Ricardo Gathers, as well as forwards Chris Obekpa and Orlando Sanchez.

The loss at Pittsburgh was troubling, but they are a solid team with their PG back, and hey, road games are pretty tough. The defense is starting to show some signs of regression/fatigue though.

Providence’s defense is springing leaks of late. After Marquette managed to shoot 9-11 from three point range, the Panthers connected on 11-20 and were a +24 from beyond the arc on the night. There’s no way Providence is digging out of a hole like that, no matter how easily they might have been able to score versus Pitt.

As was the case throughout the game against Marquette, Pittsburgh hurt PC early in transition, but that carried over into the halfcourt set as the game wore on, as Woodall routinely picked apart the Friars’ defense that let up 86 points a game after seeing Marquette hang 79 on them at home.

A week ago Providence was a top six defensive field goal percentage team in the Big East, but the past two games have been setbacks defensively.

The Friars offered a 2015 big man. Hopefully we can all hop in our flying cars and check him out at the Dunk.

A reclassified freshman, Miller has already attracted his fair share of high-major attention, and it is easy to see why as the young big man has a world of physical tools and natural basketball skill. His frame is long and agile, he runs and jumps with ease, and he has a soft touch that extends all the way out to the three-point line.

Given three plus years to develop at a program like New Hampton and Miller has a chance to be the latest New England prospect to contend for a high national ranking.

The best part of this article? The “Marshon” reference in the subtitle. I honestly still can’t get used to MarShon.

At the end of his junior season, few scouts, if any, believed that Brooks would be able to excel as a professional, let alone be drafted in the first round. But during his final season in a Friars uniform, the long, lanky guard from Georgia elevated his game to a new level, becoming one of the nation’s elite scorers and catching the eyes of NBA scouts, one of which was New Jersey Nets General Manager Billy King.
Coming into the shortened, post-lockout season, the Nets were in desperate need of scoring. To fill this void, they acquired Brooks in a trade from the Boston Celtics on the night of the draft; so far, the Nets have gotten exactly what they were looking for.

Looks like he’s going to be a game time decision for tonight’s game as he deals with the sore Achilles.

MarShon Brooks, Nets
(Drafted No. 25; current rookie rank: No. 4)
Any time a rookie performs as well as Brooks has, it’s a surprise, even if he was the top pick in the draft. But what Brooks is doing as a late first-round pick is stunning.

Brooks’ scoring talent was obvious in college, but teams weren’t sure how it would transfer to the NBA since he’d be playing second fiddle to Deron Williams after playing like Jimmer Fredette at Providence (he had the ball in his hands all the time and could do whatever he wanted). But Brooks has proved to be many things for the Nets — an excellent weapon playing off of Williams, a great shot-creator on his own, a terrific finisher in the paint and as a midrange shooter, and a good 3-point specialist. Not only that, but he’s rebounding and defending his position like a veteran.

If he maintains this level of play, Brooks becomes a long-term solution as a starting shooting guard in the NBA. He’s a strong contender for rookie of the year honors and he looks like he can be the leading scorer of his team in the next few years. Right now, it looks like the Celtics will live to regret not drafting him and trading the pick to the Nets.

What do you think has improved most in your game since the season started?

Chris: I still play my game. People say I don’t have great offense but I don’t want to argue. I’m on a team with many scorers so I don’t battle for points, I do what I have to do and play great defense. Even if I score 0 points, It doesn’t matter as long as we got the win and I contributed to it. I also do a lot of rebounding. It’s the little things that add up to great results.

Where he has made the biggest impact in his first season on the court is on the defensive end, becoming a strong presence, leading the team in blocks with 1.5 per game, while also being one of the top rebounders on the squad. For former Providence assistant coach and current Towson head coach Pat Skerry, the primary recruiter for Kofane, his success isn’t a surprise.

“Ed Cooley and his staff have done a really good job with Brice,” Skerry said. “He is having a good freshman year. I like his motor defensively…He is a really good teammate.

“He is a tough kid, he plays defense, he rebounds. He is a kid that is having a good career. They will get him better, too. I think [he is] a guy that can play a good role in a program that is on the upswing in the Big East.”

The annual Providence College men’s basketball Alumni Game is set to take place on Saturday, February 18, at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center prior the Providence versus Georgetown game. The Alumni Game will begin at 2:45 p.m. with former Friars such as Ernie DiGregorio, Joe Hassett and Jacek Duda among others participating in the game.

Brooks has scored in double-digits in 14 of 16 games this season, but also managed to shoot 47 percent from the field as the second scoring option on a bad offensive team. According to Synergy Sports Technology, he currently ranks in the league’s 88th percentile in half-court scoring efficiency. He’s topped 20 points on five different occasions this season (including a do-it-all scoring performance against the Charlotte Bobcats on Sunday), but as a product of efficient shooting (he was 53 percent from the field overall in those five games) rather than thoughtless shot-hunting. Brooks creates much of his offense off the dribble, but somehow commits turnovers at the same low rate as an off-ball cutter or a spot-up shooter.

In another Nets loss, Marshon Brooks scored 14 points but didn’t shoot the ball particularly well (6-17 shooting, 0-4 from dowtown). However, he showed a little more than scoring with this assist to Kris Humphries that made ESPN as the #2 Top Play on SportsCenter.

Marshon Brooks keeps getting better and better, and this time it helped the New Jersey Nets defeat the Golden State Warriors 107-100. Brooks finished with a career high 22 points (8-14 shooting, 2-4 from downtown, 4-4 from the line), 8 rebounds, and a career high 6 assists.

Fadeaways, bank shots, runners, threes, floaters, fakes galore; Brooks ran the second half, knocking down shots and setting up teammates (particularly Kris Humphries). Added up to a career-high in points and assists, and his play did not mirror flukiness. Defense is still a ways away — he was often beat off the dribble by Monta Ellis, understandably so, but offensively he makes the difficult look routine nightly.

The scouting report on Marshon Brooks coming out of college was that he was a volume scorer, and scouts questioned if Brooks’ isolation scoring ability could translate to the NBA. Five games into the season, Brooks doesn’t seem to be having much trouble adjusting. He is posting a PPP of 1.176 in isolation situations, which puts him in the top 7 percent of all NBA players.

Brooks is very comfortable with his right hand, and what has impressed me most about him is that he takes the ball from the dribble into his shot very quickly. That quick release prevents bigger defenders from bothering his shot. As the season goes on, it will be interesting to see what happens when teams start to overplay his right hand. Is his release just as quick coming from the left? Can he develop a counter move from that right side? Brooks’ ability to adjust will determine whether he remains near the top of these rankings.